The power of negative and positive episodic memories

Abstract

The power of episodic memories is that they bring a past moment into the present, providing opportunities for us to recall details of the experiences, reframe or update the memory, and use the retrieved information to guide our decisions. In these regards, negative and positive memories can be especially powerful: Life’s highs and lows are disproportionately represented in memory, and when they are retrieved, they often impact our current mood and thoughts and influence various forms of behavior. Research rooted in neuroscience and cognitive psychology has historically focused on memory for negative emotional content. Yet the study of autobiographical memories has highlighted the importance of positive emotional memories, and more recently, cognitive neuroscience methods have begun to clarify why positive memories may show powerful relations to mental wellbeing. Here, we review the models that have been proposed to explain why emotional memories are long-lasting (durable) and likely to be retrieved (accessible), describing how in overlapping—but distinctly separable—ways, positive and negative memories can be easier to retrieve, and more likely to influence behavior. We end by identifying potential implications of this literature for broader topics related to mental wellbeing, education, and workplace environments.

Dynamic music-induced emotions shape the episodic structure of memory

“…Our results show that discrete and continuous changes in music-evoked emotions trigger event separation effects in memory, as indexed by subjective time dilation and impaired temporal memory for items spanning emotional contexts. Furthermore, our results demonstrate that positive valence enhances associative encoding processes 25,26,30 , such that larger shifts in emotion towards more positive affective states promotes the binding and compression memory, whereas shifts towards more negative emotional states promote event segmentation. Finally, memories of information that coincide with both musical (i.e., perceptual) boundaries, valence boundaries, as well as information encoded during arousing and positive emotional states are enhanced over the long term and more tightly linked to their original temporal context.…”

“…The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotion posits that positive affect increases flexible cognitive processing and leads to enhanced integration of multi-featural information 30,31 . Furthermore, a growing body of literature has linked positive affect to enhanced associative memory 25 , possibly via behavioral activation 26,[67][68][69] , or a state of increased motivation for exploration and novelty-seeking. It has been recently proposed that behavioral activation promotes the integration of contextual details in memory by shifting cognitive resources toward the representation of higher-order features of events, such as an object's background and surrounding items 26 .…”

“…Importantly, arousal is not the only defining feature of subjective emotional experience. Valence is also a key dimension of core affect 22,23 , with negative and positive emotions often exerting different effects on the quality of episodic memory [24][25][26] . On one hand, negative emotional valence (i.e., how unpleasant something is) elicits strikingly similar effects on cognition as do event boundaries, including increased item-focused processing and focused attention 27,28 .…”

“…This finding suggests that moments of strong negative emotion may disrupt sequential processing and enhance event segmentation effects in memory. On the other hand, positive emotions broaden the scope of attention [29][30][31] and enhance associative memory [24][25][26] . While these associative memory effects have been shown for static item-item associations, such as paired associates displayed side-by-side, it is unclear whether the mnemonic benefit of positive affective states also extends to temporal encoding processes.…”

Positive autobiographical memories to counteract low mood in remitted depression: A longitudinal daily-life investigation

“…This is especially true when reliving AMs for central experiences in our lives (Holland & Kensinger, 2010). Positive AMs are important for building a positive sense of self (Westerhof et al, 2020) and the ease of their recollection is closely related to psychological well-being (Williams et al, 2022). Recollecting positive life experiences can be a protective factor in coping with emotional distress (Speer & Delgado, 2017, for example, in combating the transient low mood which, if left unregulated, may trigger relapse in those remitted from depression (Teasdale, 1988).…”